


Silver and Gold

by bulbousalligator



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Angst, Hale Pack, M/M, Magical Claudia Stilinski, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Magical Tattoos, Mental Instability, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 13:26:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4921306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulbousalligator/pseuds/bulbousalligator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles accidentally killed his mother when he was ten years old. It kind of set the mood for the majority of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver and Gold

It started slowly. Sudenly it was easier to find things I'm his mess of a bedroom; his homework was always the first place he looked, he never spent more than two minutes looking for his shoes, and there was always a pen in reach. Then his mother was sick, and he started to notice things.

He noticed how her hair lost its luster, and her eyes lost their shine. How she complained of aches in her bones and of sounds no one else could hear. Saw things that weren't there. Said things to people who weren't there. He noticed that as her eyes dimmed, his own started to shine as hers had. Noticed how easy things became for him. Noticed everything all the time, unable to focus on a single thing at a time.

His father watched him with eyes full of desperation and knowing, and always with a bone deep sadness that Stiles could feel to his very core. The weight of his gaze felt like blame. Stiles started to avoid looking at his father in the eyes whenever he could.

Some days after school, when his mother would sit in a chair facing the window and mutter about trees and the eb and flow of energy and lines, she would hold his hands with a surprisingly tight grip and whisper things that made no sense with such an urgency that Stiles had no choice but to listen intently to every sound that left her mouth, whether they were loud or sounds breathed so quietly he could only hear with his ear close to her mouth.

The night that this all started is something that would never leave Stiles. He could never forget. That night was a brand burned into his skin, a reminder of the day everything in his world twisted backwards and upside down.

The days were growing warmer, but Stiles continued to wear long sleves to hide the bruises on his wrists that had formed the day before when Claudia had wrapped her hand there so tight Stiles lost feeling in his fingers as she stated at him with unfathomable urgency and spoke in what Stiles thought was a mixture of Polish and French. She had been doing this more and more with each passing day.

When he got home on this particular day, Claudia was standing on the coffee table, reaching towards the ceiling with a look of intense concentration on her face. Her fingers alternating between splaying out and twitching into the aproximation of a fist; Claudia had been losing her dexterity for weeks now. It had started with just dropping things and a tight lipped smile to go with whatever she decided to say to get past the moment as quickly as possible ("There's a lesson here boys: always dry a glass before trying to use it." after shattering a glass of Apple juice she had been bringing Stiles, or "This book is so terrible I'm offended that it's ever even been in the same room at me! We should bury it." after dropping a book she was trying to put back on the bookshelf.), and escalated to her being unable to hold anything on her own. She had learned to balance things between or on top of her hands or clutched things close to her chest with her arms. That she was moving her fingers as much as she was was amazing and brought a brilliant, hopeful smile to Stiles' lips. 

As soon as Claudia saw him, before he could even greet her, she beckoned him over with her other hand as her lips stretched into what they did when she was trying to smile these days: a sort of stretched out pressed thin line of lips.

"Sweetheart, you're home! Come help me catch the ties! They're getting all tangled up we need to unknot them or they'll get too tangled up." 

Stiles rushed over, happy that he could even understand the words she was saying, even if they made no sense. This was intimately better than when she would speak in another language and look at him with expecting eyes and grow frustrated when he didn't understand. Stiles had stated to teach himself French so he could understand, but it was a slow going process. So far he was trying to figure out congegations and could speak and understand some common frases and words. 

Once Stiles was up on the table, after toeing his shoes off after his mother has tisked at him for getting dirt on the rug, he raised his hand towards the ceiling and splayed his fingers out just as Claudia was. At first, all he saw was the offwhite of the ceiling. But soon, just as his arm was starting to ache and his fingers tingled, he saw something shimering just in the corner of his eye.

When he looked over he saw them for the first time. Silver and gold strings tangled up I'm his mother's fist and looping around her fingers. 

Stiles couldn't breathe. "Mom-"

"Stiles dear, careful of that tangle. Don't snap that tie; that's meant to stay intact for another thirty years at least." 

Her smile was so gentle and softly chastising that it made Stiles' chest ache. He hasn't seen that look for weeks.

When he looked back to his own hand he saw a knot of shining lines snagged on his fingers. Gasping air into his lungs that did nothing to stop the spinning of the room. He jerked his hand back towards his chest, holding his bruised wrist with his other hand in some sort of attempt to protect his fingers from the dully glitering lines twisting around in the air.

"No-!" Claudia jerked towards him, her fingers freeing easily from the lines as Stiles pulled the cluster off its track and towards himself. He heard a dull snapping sound like gunfire next to his ear and the knot pulsed with a glow. 

Stiles fingers burned, and he screamed. His world tilted sideways as his mother's fingers bumped uselessly into Stiles' arm unable to grip into his sleeve. She watched hopelessly as His eyes rolled back in his head as he fell off the table and cracked his head against the hardwood floor. 

He wouldn't wake for hours, but when he did there would a swirling bit of a silver line twisted about his pinky and hand, ending as it looked around his wrist. The first thing Stiles would see when he opened his eyes would be the dark mess of curls twisted around Claudia's frantic face. The next day, she would start to see things that weren't there. It would start with an empty vase that Claudia will place in the kitchen table and smell the air above, as though there we're flowers. 

Stiles' head will ache for years after this. The silver line would never fade.


End file.
